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The great man is too often all of a piece it is the little man that is a bundle of contradictory elements. He is inexhaustible. You never come to the end of the surprises he has in store for you.
W. Somerset Maugham
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W. Somerset Maugham
Age: 90 †
Born: 1874
Born: January 1
Died: 1965
Died: January 1
Army Scout
Literary Critic
Novelist
Physician Writer
Playwright
Prosaist
Screenwriter
Writer
Paris
France
W. Somerset Maugham
Somerset Maugham
Come
Greatness
Bundle
Great
Piece
Inexhaustible
Never
Elements
Bundles
Men
Pieces
Surprises
Often
Contradictory
Ends
Store
Littles
Stores
Little
Surprise
More quotes by W. Somerset Maugham
The well dressed man is he whose clothes you never notice
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What has influenced my life more than any other single thing has been my stammer. Had I not stammered I would probably... have gone to Cambridge as my brothers did, perhaps have become a don and every now and then published a dreary book about French literature.
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It's a funny thing about life if you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get it.
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Most people are such fools that it is really no great compliment to say that someone is above the average.
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Genius is talent provided with ideals. Genius starves while talent wears purple and fine linen. The man of genius of today will infifty years' time be in most cases no more than a man of talent.
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As the cosmos are in place, so be it with your life.
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I can only guess that it made the world he went back to...strangely without meaning. Though he lived in it, though he even enjoyed it, it remained utterly remote. I think it had lost sense for him. In his heart was the reflection of a lovely dream that he could never quite recall.
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There in the mist, enormous, majestic, silent and terrible, stood the Great Wall of China. Solitarily, with the indifference of nature herself, it crept up the mountain side and slipped down to the depth of the valley.
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People talk of beauty lightly, and having no feeling for words, they use that one carelessly, so that it loses its force and the thing it stands for, sharing its name with a hundred trivial objects, is deprived of dignity. They call beautiful a dress, a dog, a sermon and when they are face to face with Beauty cannot recognise it.
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An art is only great and significant if it is one that all may enjoy. The art of a clique is but a plaything.
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A good style should show no signs of effort. What is written should seem a happy accident.
W. Somerset Maugham
It's no good trying to keep up old friendships. It's painful for both sides. The fact is, one grows out of people, and the only thing is to face it.
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Failure make people bitter and cruel. Success improves the character of the man.
W. Somerset Maugham
Things were easier for the old novelists who saw people all of a piece. Speaking generally, their heroes were good through and through, their villains wholly bad.
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The trouble with young writers is that they are all in their sixties.
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We who are of mature age seldom suspect how unmercifully and yet with what insight the very young judge us.
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We have long passed the Victorian Era when asterisks were followed after a certain interval by a baby.
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The officers saluted as she passed and gravely bowed. They walked back across the courtyard and got into their chairs. She saw Waddington light a cigarette. A little smoke lost in the air, that was the life of a man.
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I'm only twenty-five. If I've made a mistake I have time to correct it.
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D'you call life a bad job? Never! We've had our ups and downs, we've had our struggles, we've always been poor, but it's been worth it, ay, worth it a hundred times I say when I look round at my children.
W. Somerset Maugham
